Quote Originally Posted by wrongway
I think this can help get this board on the roll and be a great topic. Why or why wouldn't you outcross your family of dogs? If you do believe you need to outcross your family, why so? And how would you outcross(completely different family or same family different strain)
To me there is no reason to outcross at all, unless 1) you've linebred incorrectly and have bred yourself into a bad position where you are repeatedly and consistently lacking something major in your family of dogs ... or 2) you have your foundation stock in abundance, and you are satisfied with it, and so you decide to do an experimental outbreeding "just to see what you get."

Some great things can come from experimental crosses, but so too can a lot of useless mutts. Therefore, just to outcross as some sort of "knee-jerk" response to having a linebred dog is the mark of a rank amateur breeder. 90% of every greenhorn will go to a good breeder when they start out, and they'll spend their hard-earned money buying a linebred animal ... and the first thing they'll do is "cross it" to something, as if breeding dogs is some sort of a "crap shoot" or roll of the dice. And then they'll buy some "other" line and do the same thing, repeating this stupidity over and over again, and will never take a forward step as worthy breeders.

After years of failure, most people will then say "all breeding is a gamble," but they will have completely missed the fact that the entire point of linebreeding is to create certainty ... and that they have merely failed to get the point, by repeatedly taking a highly-linebred animal from years of a good breeder's work ... and then just repeatedly "crossing it" ... which is basically taking ALL OF THE CERTAINTY that it took years to create, and just throwing it out the window. Some people get this truth right away, while others never will.

Jack


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